Teslas are high-performance, all-electric vehicles that are characterized by a minimalist design, advanced technology, etc. This variant is known for rapid acceleration and a low-slung, sporty ride, with some models achieving 0-60 miles per hour in under 2 seconds.
Tesla was the world’s bestselling electric vehicle maker for approximately 6 to 7 years. The Model 3 launched in 2017 and established Tesla as the market leader in yearly sales by the end of 2018.
Tesla lost its crown as the world’s bestselling electric vehicle maker on Friday, January 2nd. Elon Musk’s right-wing politics, which expired U.S. tax breaks for buyers, and stiff overseas policies, which pushed sales down for a second year in a row.
Tesla had said that it delivered 1.64 million vehicles in 2025, down 9% from a year earlier.
The biggest electric vehicle maker is the Chinese rival BYD, which sold 2.26 million vehicles last year.
The sales drop came despite President Donald Trump’s marketing effort early last year when he had a pre-conference to praise Musk. Trump called Musk a “patriot” and announced that he had bought one of his cars, which can show support that may have helped Tesla stock close higher for the day. Trump’s marketing effort was said to be able to end up hurting it. Tesla then began rising from the opening after Trump posted overnight on his platform that Elon Musk was “putting it on the line” to help the country.
By the end of September last year, the sales were hit hard by the expiration of a $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicle purchases by the Trump administration.
The latest quarter was the first with sales of the Model Y and Model 3 that Musk unveiled in early October last year, which was a part of an effort to revive sales. The Model Y costs $40,000, while the Model 3 costs $37,000. These versions are expected to help Tesla compete with the Chinese models in Europe and Asia.
Earlier last year, Musk said that a “major rebound” in sales was underway, but the investors didn’t pan out, choosing to focus on Musk’s pivot to different parts of the business. He expected hundreds of thousands of self-driving Teslas that would not require human intervention to be on the road by the end of the year. He also committed to staying as CEO of the company for at least another 5 years.
The company hopes that they can roll out the service in several cities this year, but in order to do that successfully, they need to take on Waymo, which has been operating for years and has far more customers. Waymo is another self- driving technology company, and in 2024, they opened their doors to anyone in LA and said goodbye to the waitlist. Now anyone can download and ride in a Waymo for someone who lives in LA. In California, Tesla is at risk of temporarily losing its license to sell cars in the state after a judge ruled it had misled customers about their safety.
California regulators were threatening to suspend Tesla’s license to sell its electric cars in the state early next year unless the automaker tones down its marketing. A judge had also concluded that the Elon Musk-led company has been misleading consumers about the technology’s capabilities.
In order for Musk to focus on the company, their director awarded Musk a potentially enormous new pay package that shareholders backed.
Later this year, Musk could become the world’s first trillionaire when he sells shares of his rocket company SpaceX to the public for the first time.
Yesterday, January 29, 2026, Tesla said that they will kill the Model S and Model X to build Optimus robots instead. CEO Elon Musk has announced that the company will stop building the Model S and the Model X in the second quarter this year.
Elon Musk had made those comments during Tesla’s latest earnings call, and he also said that the company will use the factory space to build an Optimus robot. The Model S came out all the way back in 2012, and the Model X followed a few years later in 2016.
The Tesla Model S has been said to be something that will go down in history that helped change the way people think about electric cars. He announced yesterday that the luxury sedan, along with the Model X SUV, will be getting axed sometime in the next few months.
He also revealed that killing the two flagship models is part of the company’s plan to transition from an automaker to a maker of autonomous vehicles and AI-powered robots. He also said that the Model S and Model X will stop being built at the company’s factory in Fremont, California, in the second quarter of this year.
The Model S and Model X combined sales numbers have been on a steady decline for a while, and their prices continue to rise. The Model S is said to be remembered as the car that helped put Tesla on the map and make electric vehicles more desirable. The Model X can include something about being the only mass-produced SUV with gullwing doors and being the most recent version that has provided it still had the power to impress.
